The UOF translation project is being undertaken with the Beihang University and will create downloadable plug-ins for Office 2003 and Office 2007 that will enable them to import and export UOF format documents.
UOF is a Chinese standard that has been developed by the Ministry of Information Industry’s Chinese Office Software Work Group, and the translators will enable Microsoft’s Office suite to remain in contention for government and public sector use where UOF is mandated.
Like the earlier Open XML to ODF translator project, the UOF project is hosted by Source Forge and the resulting translation tools will be available under open source licenses. Microsoft will not develop the tools itself, but partners such as Beihang University, Beijing Information Technology Institute, Tsinghua University, and Lenovo’s LitSoft are expected to do so.
The ODF translator project began in July 2006 as Microsoft teamed up with French software firm CleverAge, Indian testing firm Aztecsoft, and Germany’s Dialogika and produced its first fruits in February with a translator tool for Microsoft’s Word and rival ODF-compliant word processors.
Microsoft also announced on Monday that beta versions of translator tools for Microsoft’s Excel and PowerPoint and their equivalents are now also available.
